Psalm 4:1-8
Individuals associated with the federal government have, in defiance of a court order and without a trial or any form of due process, deported hundreds of people from the territory of the United States to El Salvador, where they will be held indefinitely in a concentration camp.[1]
That was American historian Timothy Snyder, writing on Tuesday about the recent U.S. crackdown against undocumented workers. He goes on to list ten reasons why this action was unconscionable.
This year, on a daily basis, almost nothing surprises me in American politics. Now, I love a good list, but what really arrested my attention in Snyder’s article was the headline: “The evil at your door.”
We often tone down moral statements. We label immoral actions as “unacceptable,” “inappropriate,” “problematic,” or “misplaced.” Here, by contrast, Snyder boldly calls American public policy “evil.” Worse, he says it is “at your door.” Worse still is his implication, “they’re coming for you next.”
And yet, what we might be tempted to call “evil” in our personal world is often banal, commonplace, humdrum. That’s the experience of the psalmist in Psalm 4. It’s almost a lament psalm, but more of a complaint. Given the parallel word play, and similarity in theme, it is probably the twin of Psalm 3.
But unlike the situation addressed in the third psalm, this psalm is not a response to a personal attack. It’s a whinge not about foes but fate, in particular the “happy” fate of those who hold the “wrong” theology. And what a contrast between this psalm and the happiness and contentment, the “complacent optimism,” [2] of Psalm 1.
The words expressed in Psalm 4, and the heart attitude and orientation of the psalmist, are optimistic – though not complacent. What surfaces in Psalm 4 is a school-of-hard-knocks optimism.
Verse 1 is a prayer to God; verses 2-5 provide context for the spiritual challenge faced by the one who is praying, and then verses 6-8 return to prayer. My CSB version of the psalm has the title, “A night prayer,” and it seems right to think of this as a thoughtful prayer to God before drifting off into well-earned sleep. “Answer me when I call,” says the psalmist to God, perhaps a literary nod to the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
What do we learn from this psalm about the one who is praying?
- he knows that his God has graciously vindicated him in the past, and that God hears his prayers in the present moment (v. 1)
- he perceives that objective justice operates in his world (vv. 1, 8)
- he knows that God comes to the rescue of the distressed (vv. 2, 6)
- he knows divine grace and is confident that his prayers will be answered (vv. 3, 8)
On the other hand, he (or she) lives in a community where it’s normal to “pursue a lie” (v. 2b), where anger is commonplace (v. 4), and where pragmatism appears to rule supreme (v. 6a).
There is more than one way to understand the context here, but verse 2 suggests a battle between true and false perceptions of reality. Verse 7 suggests the existence of conflict with wealthy critics in an agricultural economy; and verses 6-7 imply that members of the community are trying to appease local nature gods to ensure good weather, a bountiful harvest, and a life of plenty.
“Which gods will guarantee the best result?” is their question.
This was a serious matter. For ancient Israel, the prospect of drought, pestilence and famine raised serious questions about God’s power to provide agriculturally for the community, “and drove many into the arms of foreign gods with their claims of prowess in agricultural (and human) fertility.”[3]
This is the lure of pragmatism: do whatever works for you, and call it good. Pragmatic religion fuels my needs, my desires, my ego. The faith of the psalmist, by contrast, is fanned into flame by “a deep experiential knowledge that comes from continued intimate relationship with God.”[4] True faith, or faith in the true God, is not about what I can get out of God, or manipulating God to follow my agenda.
The evil the psalmist faces in Psalm 4 is subtle, banal, beige. And yet it has serious consequences. It is the evil of living without a relationship of confident trust in the living God, the evil of relying on one’s own ingenuity and ability, the evil of “exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man” (Rom 1:23).
It is important to understand that evil is not a thing in itself but the absence of the good. The evil we experience in our lives has three primary sources: [5]
- Deceptive ideas that distort the truth (e.g., Gen 3:1, “Did God really say…” followed by vv. 4f, “No! You will certainly not die … God knows that when you eat [the fruit] your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil”).
- Disordered desires (“the flesh,” to use Paul’s term): fallen human nature that craves self-gratification rather than the fruit of the Spirit; or pursuing what is good in the wrong way, at the wrong time, or disproportionately.
- Crooked culture: cultural systems and societal norms that normalise and institutionalise what the Bible calls sin – from racism to advertising to pornography.
Put these three sources of evil together and you have a recipe for disaster at a personal level – but also for our whole civilization. When deceptive ideas align with disordered desires and are reinforced by a sinful society, they become extremely difficult to resist.
Modern equivalents of pagan prayers to idols might include money, power, sex, drugs, control, prestige, and relationships – what biblical scholar Gerald H. Wilson suggests are the “things we turn to in order to provide a barrier against the droughts and famines of our lives.”[6]
What remedy does Psalm 4 offer? The psalm simply points us to God, who sanctifies us (v. 3a), hears our prayers (v. 3b), satisfies us with material and spiritual blessings (v. 7), and provides a space where we can rest and sleep in safety (v. 8).
Despite difficult circumstances and a gloomy outlook, the psalmist can pray, with confident serenity,
Let the light of your face shine on us, Lord. You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and new wine abound. I will both lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, Lord, make me live in safety (vv. 6b-8; cf Num 6:24-26).
It is the same in every generation: we learn to “trust and obey,” as the old hymn reminds us. Or in the words of a more recent Christian song:
In 1942, long before The Narnia Chronicles, scholar and writer C. S. Lewis published The Screwtape Letters, a series of fictional letters from Screwtape, a senior devil, to his inexperienced nephew Wormwood, filled with profound spiritual insight. Here’s Screwtape, explaining to Wormwood why God allows Christians to experience “troughs” as well as highs in their lives:
[The Enemy] cannot ravish. He can only woo … Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs – to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best.
We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.
Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.[8]
Sermon 800 copyright © 2025 Rod Benson. Preached at North Rocks Community Church, Sydney, Australia, on Sunday 23 March 2025. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Christian Standard Bible (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020).
References
[1] Timothy Snyder, “The evil at your door,” https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-evil-at-your-door, 18 Mar 2025.
[2] Michael Wilcock, The Message of Psalms 1-72 (Leicester: IVP, 2001), 29.
[3] Gerald H. Wilson, Psalms (vol. 1 of 2; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 149.
[4] Wilson, Psalms, 161.
[5] John Mark Comer, Live No Lies: Recognize and Resist the Three Enemies that Sabotage Your Peace (New York: Waterbrook, 2021), xxiii.
[6] Wilson, Psalms, 162.
[7] John H. Sammis, “When we walk with the Lord” (1887); Matt Crocker et al, “Oceans (Where Feet May Fail),” Hillsong United (2013).
[8] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters: Annotated Edition (London: HarperCollins, 2013 [1942]), 46f.
Image source: Gaza farmer Ayman Subeih collects strawberries for exports to the West Bank. Arab Weekly.
iDigress 